Huffington Post Gay Voices Comes Out In Support Of Murdering Gay People

Writing for the increasingly repulsive, always miserable, and embarrassingly cheap Huffington Post Gay Voices, failed logic poster child Jim Downs (left) says that Hillary Clinton’s historic speech about gay rights this week—in which she, among other things, told the world that killing gay people is wrong—will actually “hurt” gay people. How dare she suggest such a thing?

The immediate and lasting effect of [Clinton’s] address will have more of an effect on the current election in the United States, than helping people abroad. At home, her speech will actually hurt, not help gay people.

In direct response to Clinton’s speech, Rick Perry immediately fired off a statement claiming “Promoting special rights for gays in foreign countries is not in America’s interests and not worth a dime of taxpayers’ money.” Leaving aside that Perry misunderstood Clinton’s speech, he claims that Clinton’s address violates American values and will drain Americans pocketbooks.

Clinton should have known that her speech would have caught more momentum among her Republican detractors than among the international community. If Clinton truly remains committed to gay issues, is an address in Geneva the place to voice such a concern?

Yes. She should have known! So, in the mind of soggy dildo Jim Downs, our leaders should not speak out against murder around the world, because it might cause their irrelevant political opponents back home to make comically awful advertisements (that nobody likes anyway)?

Maybe no one should say anything about anything, out of fear that it might cause a political “backlash” (e.g., shitty YouTube videos) and cost someone, somewhere an election. Because what’s more important, after all: winning an election or making an impassioned call for the global community to embrace human rights for all people?

Is Jim Downs mentally retarded?

This is all to say that while Clinton wants to do the right thing and make a noble statement about people being beaten and tortured for their sexual choices, she invariably and unwittingly propagates many contradictions and posits a familiar strand of American cultural imperialism. Is the United States really in a position to make an international call for gay civil rights when the Obama administration, which Clinton represents, has failed to give any federal teeth to the gay marriage campaign?

Right. Because the political machinations in this country that have put up temporary (but continually weakening) legal barriers to gay couples being given a piece of paper that entitles them to certain financial benefits is the same thing as beating and torturing them. Gays having their heads chopped off in Saudi Arabia and Prop. 8 in California? Totally the same thing. Jim Downs, who is supposedly a history professor(?!), says that imploring world leaders not to execute their citizens because of their sexuality is a “strand of American cultural imperialism”? Since when did taking a position against murder become a kind of American imperialism? And even if it is, so fucking what. Good!

Ugh:

Clinton is worried about violence against gays abroad, but how does Perry’s language provoke the religious right to launch a crusade against “gay” Americans at home? Perry exclaims, “Investing tax dollars to promote a lifestyle many Americas of faith find so deeply objectionable is wrong.” In the stroke of a sentence, Perry calls on Tea Party advocates with his references to “tax dollars” and he summons the religious right with his reference to “faith.” All of which ends up with both groups tying gay people to the whipping posts in a symbolic gesture to broaden the Republican base. Put another, gay people once again reenter the election season as a political football in order to rally the right against the left.

Clinton’s speech attempted to raise awareness for gay people abroad, but it summarily fueled a fire on gay people at home.

Please. As if Perry or anyone of his ilk ever needed a reason to use gays as a political football. If it wasn’t Clinton’s speech, it would be something else. The religious right’s threshold for provocation against gays isn’t exactly high.

Jim Downs and the Huffington Post believe that if everyone just stays quiet while gays are murdered around the world, the fringe 2012 GOP presidential nominees won’t make any hypothetical gains in some fucking poll in Iowa in the race to the fucking White House? Fine. I have a response to logic like that–logic that is so plainly ignorant and so plainly offensive (and it takes a lot to offend me)–and that is to ship Jim Downs and the Huffington Post Gay Voices to Uganda, where they can continue to publish articles about Hillary Clinton and Rick Perry all they want, so long as they can escape being set on fire and burned alive. Good luck.

Really, so don’t call attention to gay people being tortured and murdered around the world because it might give the god botherers some political ammunition to use against you? What a dickhead.
A kind of attractive dickhead, but a dickhead none the less.

As an academic, I’m inclined to be embarrassed about his semantic ideas that have no basis in reality. It’s pure contrarian horseshit that gives people the wrong impression about academics. Not all of us twist are arguments into cliche Marxist or New Historicist pablum. Some of us live in the real world. Also, a sure boner killer is a pretty guy spouting stupidities.

As an academic I’m inclined to be sympathetic — and certainly not all of his arguments are without merit. But frankly I’m finding it hard because he’s so handsome! http://www.facebook.com/jim.downs. I don’t think he needs my sympathy.

Zach, when you’re right, you’re right. This ugly elfin idiot is disgusting and Gay Voices is a disgrace. If we had more writers like him and more propaganda like this in the 1940s, we’d all be speaking German now.